The present disclosure relates generally to access control systems, and more particularly, to a system and a method to increase performance without decreasing battery life.
Various mobile devices have been utilized to open locks via an infrared ‘beam’ to the lock, which provides directionality, or a ‘push the button’ on the box to wake up the lock for subsequent communication over Bluetooth. With the capability present in Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) to communicate with very low power, new system architectures allow the lock to be ‘always on’ and sending periodic BTLE advertisements, such as once per second so that the lock may be opened without requiring a wake up procedure. The low power requirements result in many years of battery life.
Adding BTLE always on capability to a lock in addition to physical card readers reduces the overall battery life. Additionally, in order to minimize the impact on the battery life, the advertisement rate for a BTLE device must be slowed down to a point to where the operational current draw is acceptable for a given battery life expectancy (i.e. 2 years). The rate at which a connectable device sends BTLE advertisements directly affects the amount of time required to connect to the device because after a person indicates intent to open a lock with their mobile device, the mobile device must wait for the next advertisement before connecting to the device. This leads to a trade-off in performance for how fast the lock opens versus battery life.